Once upon a time, people seemed to be more engaged with their mental faculties. These days we are surrounded by a roving horde of empty-headed numpties who appear to be getting more and more stupid.
Vacant, zombie-like eyes infrequently looking up from their phones to witness some fight or car crash or flash mob or anything they can film, from their phones, for later posting on social media.
Nothing much seems to excite them, but they know what will share on TikTok.
When they go to the amusement park or a concert or a ballgame, we notice an almost homogenous cluster of seemingly doltish imbeciles all moving in unison, entranced in some meaningless frivolity. Who are these people and how did they become so mindless?
Are We Getting Dumber?
The cacophony of mass chewing on funnel cakes, popcorn, pizza, and hotdogs can be heard as they're rhythmically compelled to nourish themselves on autopilot like cattle in a feedlot. Not ever thinking about what they're actually eating or how the food ever got from one place to the other.
It's just spontaneously there. All put together to amuse these people.
Do they even like ballgames or water parks? Perhaps if they could make genuine decisions they could answer that question.
Studies have shown that the amount of times we make conscious, well-thought out choices is now around 3% of our waking life. We're not much different than the AI robots we fear will replace us.
Nevertheless, their faces are glued to their phones unconsciously doom scrolling from one piece of nonsense to the next.
The number of us who ask the question Why are people so stupid? is rapidly dwindling, but the inquiry remains. What in the world is going on with the apparent and sudden loss of smarts these days?
In 2006, Mike Judge and Ethan Cohen wrote a satirical futuristic dystopian comedy about the collapse of a thinking society called Idiocracy. Protagonists from the film emerged in the future to witness the pure anti-intellectualism of the new era.
Yet, Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be a documentary. While we can appreciate the film for its unique, scathing political and social criticism, we could also laugh knowing it was ripe with unrealistic hyperbole. Such a future doesn't await us, right?
What Does The Research Say?
People just seem like they're getting much dumber, but what does the science say?
Researcher James Flynn observed and proved that intelligence quotients were steadily increasing in the early 20th century. It was later dubbed The Flynn Effect. We were well on our way to a utopian, reasoned society full of critical, objective thinkers. What the hell happened?
New research proves that the Flynn Effect abruptly stopped in the late 1990s, and evidently reversed.
As the research confirms, we really are getting dumber.
IQs have steadily plummeted from generation to generation since 1975. At the going rate of decline, it is indeed possible that a society just like the one portrayed in Idiocracy could be one we see in reality.
While the research does confirm people are getting dumber and dumber, scientists aren't quite sure what is causing this dilemma. Nobody knows why, but we're all doomed to a downward spiral of idiocy with no hope in sight.
What Is Making Us So Stupid?
What scientists can agree upon, however, is that the cause of our intellectual demise is likely to be environmental and not something inherently wrong with our genetics.
This means that something external is causing us to be so stupid and we have a chance to fix it! We don't know for sure, but we have a pretty good hunch what's causing our cognitive disintegration.
We're looking at you, 20 second videos on TikTok and Facebook!
We could also be getting dumber by consuming copious amounts of junk food and poison. Fast food could be making us stupid. A highly processed diet full of oils, sugars, and chemically broken down foods could be a factor as well as the technology that is ripping us away from our methods of critical thought.
Perhaps if we change our diets and give the cellphones a break we can reset the Flynn Effect back to its former glory.
Yet, as I look around at the stooges and morons that abound in huddled formation with blank, ape-like expressions, I sincerely doubt that we'll ever recover from this trend.
Maybe Idiocracy was a documentary after all.
